SOURCE: Orel, Harold. “Robert Louis Stevenson: Many Problems, Some Successes.” In The Victorian Short Story: Development and Triumph of a Literary Genre, pp. 115–18, 122–23, 127–37. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

In the following excerpt, Orel discusses “Markheim” in conjunction with the tales “Ollala” and “Thrawn Janet” as representing some of Stevenson's most successful horror stories.

Let us assume that the outline of Robert Louis Stevenson's eventful, and not always happy, life is familiar to most readers. Let us also assume that it will not change dramatically because of the discovery of hitherto unsuspected biographical material. Two critical questions are our major concern here: why Stevenson thought of a large number of his short stories as being deficient in form or content, and why (despite his reservations) a particular category of his short stories—that of the horror tales—retains the affection of general readers and most literary critics.